THE 4,270-ACRE FIRE IN SANTA CRUZ COUNTY LAST MONTH burned more than 60 homes and threatened hundreds of others.

But some homeowners are being blamed for contributing to the losses.  For one thing, it was disclosed yesterday after investigations that 87% of the houses that burned had not properly cleared the so-called defensible space around their homes.

AP

State law requires that all combustible ground cover be removed within 30 feet of a structure and reduced within 100 feet.  While fire officials cannot say with any certainty that any of these homes would not have burned if they had been properly cleared, they are saying that their failure to do so greatly increased their chances of destruction.

The San Jose Mercury News covers this recent revelation HERE.

Another contention has just arisen also.  More than half of the destroyed homes were built illegally and should not have been there in the first place.  Some people are saying that these illegal homes caused fire resources to be utilized on them when they could have been re-positioned to protect houses that were legally placed there.

The owners of the clandestine homes say that the costs of getting all the required permits to build in the county can amount to more than $50,000 before you even start building and that is too burdensome to afford.

KCBA Ch. 35 has this video report on the illegal homes and interviews some of the permit-dodgers:

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